A four-member team of astronauts launched to the International Space Station by SpaceX touched back down on Earth in the Gulf of Mexico on May 6.
The return via a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule came just one day after the group undocked from the space station following a six-month mission in which they conducted science experiments and did maintenance.
Dragon and Crew-3 astronauts consisted of Raja Chari, a U.S. Air Force combat jet and test pilot who served as mission commander, Tom Marshburn, a medical doctor and former NASA flight surgeon, Kayla Barron, a U.S. Navy submarine officer and nuclear engineer, and Matthias Maurer, a European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut and materials science engineer.
They returned to Earth and splashed down off the coast of Florida at 12:43 a.m. ET on Friday. NASA expected to have them back in Houston later in the morning.
“On behalf of the entire SpaceX team, welcome home … It’s been an absolute honor to support you on this mission, Endurance Crew, and thanks for flying SpaceX,” space officials said over SpaceX’s livestream.
“Thanks for letting us take Endurance … looking forward to watching more flights with Endurance in the future. It was a great ride and enjoyed working with the SpaceX and NASA team for getting us up to the space station and back so quickly,” astronaut Chari said after they touched down.
The crew was first launched into space on Nov 10, 2021, at 9:03 p.m from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
They embraced the seven astronauts remaining at the station—Crew 4 commander Kjell Lindgren, pilot Bob Hines, Jessica Watkins, and European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti; and three Russian cosmonauts, Oleg Artemyev, Denis Matveev, and Sergey Korsakov—before parting ways.